A Pep Talk on Energy Innovation

In what might prove to be his last public appearance as energy secretary, Steven Chu delivered a pep talk of sorts on Wednesday to hundreds of entrepreneurs, researchers and others at the ARPA-E conference on energy innovation in suburban Maryland. European Pressphoto Agency Steven Chu, the nation’s outgoing energy secretary. Toward the outset, Dr. Chu, a key creator of ARPA-E, which stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, ticked off a list of historical predictions about new technology that turned out to be wrong. Among them was one by the head of the British post office in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell received a patent on the telephone. “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not,” the postal official reportedly said. “We have plenty of messenger boys.’’ Dr. Chu declared that entrepreneurs, engineers, bankers and others woul...